Jill Sorenson - Set The Dark On Fire

He groaned, picturing her pert little breasts, encased in the sexiest scrap of black lace he’d ever laid eyes on, and those pale pink panties, clinging to her ass like wet tissue.

He could have kissed her. Hell, he was almost certain she’d have let him strip off her panties and bury himself in her right there on that sun-warmed rock. He was hard all over again just thinking about it.

His hands curled around the steering wheel until his knuckles went white.

Perhaps it was a poor excuse for the intensity of his physical reaction, but he’d been too long without a woman. Sin City had a way of making a man feel dirty, inside and out, and the last few months in Vegas had really taken their toll. He’d seen enough bachelorettes, strippers, and whores to last him a lifetime.

So why was he panting after this small town bad girl?

Shay was easy on the eyes, to be sure, and she was probably easy in bed, but women like her were hard on men. And Luke had never been into casual sex.

He’d never been tempted to throw down his bone in the great outdoors either, but when the opportunity presented itself, he’d been so goddamned ready. He was still ready. For some reason, her earthy sensuality triggered this utterly primal, embarrassingly powerful, “me Tarzan, you Jane” response.

He couldn’t stop thinking about her wet panties.

Shifting in his seat, he leaned back and eased off on the gas. If he took the turns any faster, he’d end up in the ditch.

He should have gone ahead and given her what she’d been asking for. Never mind that he was on duty. Never mind that until he heard from the county medical examiner, he was supposed to be investigating a possible homicide. Never mind that if the autopsy report indicated wrongful death, he might have to consider Shay Phillips a suspect, along with her “rebel without a clue” boyfriend and gun-toting next door neighbor.

“Goddamn it,” he muttered, hitting his palm against the steering wheel.

Garrett Snell had told him all about Fernando Martinez this morning. Apparently, the man had caught his wife in bed with another hombre a few years back, and according to Garrett, Fernando ran them both out of town with a shotgun.

The quiet, unassuming father of five he’d met a few moments ago didn’t quite match up to Deputy Snell’s colorful description of him. Luke didn’t know who to believe, but his deputy was as shady as they came. He might have to add Garrett’s name to the list of suspects.

Cursing his luck, which had taken a turn for the worse in Vegas a few months ago and gone downhill from there, Luke reached into the glove compartment for his cell phone. As he leaned toward the passenger seat, he got a whiff of Shay Phillips’ sweet herbal scent. His upholstery would probably smell like her for days.

Gritting his teeth, he checked his messages. Two missed calls and no bars. Damned hillbilly town had the least reliable cell phone service this side of the border.

This interim sheriff position was turning out to be a real bitch.

Luke hoped the ME would be able to make an unequivocal decision regarding cause of death, to reconstruct the last moments of Yesenia Montes’s life in a way that explained every unanswered question, and to rule out foul play.

Maybe he was mistaken about the body being moved postmortem, and wrong to think the scene had been staged. Maybe, just this once, good had prevailed over evil, and the most innocent explanation would turn out to be the right one.

The county medical examiner was long gone, so he had to deal with Barry Snell, the funeral home director. In addition to being Garrett’s father, Barry was the mayor of Tenaja Falls and its coroner when no suspicious circumstances were evident. Having already been introduced to him, Luke knew that unlike his son, Barry had an upbeat temperament and perpetual smile. Luke wasn’t sure which man he trusted less.

“Official ruling is accidental death,” Barry said as he opened the door to the morgue’s side entrance, his gentle grin belying the seriousness of his words. Luke wondered if Barry was capable of a suitably grim expression. “But Dr. Hoyt remarked upon a few anomalies.”

Luke followed him to the autopsy room. “Like what?”

“Take a look,” Barry said, ushering him inside.

Luke had seen his share of dead bodies, mostly drunks and vagrants, old men who had succumbed to illness, drug and alcohol abuse, or the elements. He wasn’t a homicide detective, however, and the only time he’d been in this particular situation, standing over the corpse of a young woman in a morgue, he’d been identifying her body.

The memory was painful, to say the least, and carried with it a thousand regrets. Though he’d tried to, he hadn’t been able to save her. Leticia Nuñez had been another casualty of Vegas, the city that chewed up beautiful women and spit them out.

Luke pushed the disturbing recollection aside, because the victim before him deserved his full attention. He vowed not to fail her, too.

Yesenia Montes was lying on her stomach on a stainless steel table, her head turned to the side, sightless eyes staring forward. Under the light of the high-powered lamp above her, he could see a number of broad, vertical lines on her naked back, shoulders, and buttocks.

“They’re lividity marks,” Barry explained, thumbing through a three-ring binder.

Luke was no forensic expert, but he knew such marks were common postmortem artifacts. A body often bore signs of whatever it had been resting against, or upon, in the moments or hours after death.

Stepping forward, he studied the darkened bands of flesh. They were widely spaced and evenly distributed, obviously not a result of the lion’s attack or caused by the soft dirt she’d been stretched out on. He frowned, guessing such marks couldn’t be found anywhere in nature, and feeling as though he should recognize their origin.

“What else?” he asked, his pulse accelerating.

Barry gave a good-natured shrug. “The doctor said he’d never viewed a victim of a lion before, but the wounds were consistent with what he’d researched. Trauma to the spinal cord and cardiac arrest were the primary causes of death.”

“Hmm,” Luke replied, wondering about the lack of blood.

“Says here the lion had a broken tooth,” Barry added, flashing his own pearly whites.

“Really?”

“One of the punctures left less of an impression than the others,” he said, closing the binder. “Dr. Hoyt made a dentistry mold.”

“What about DNA?”

“He took a sample from the bite area, in case there was saliva. And several swabs from…” He cleared his throat. “Other places.”

Luke glanced at the body on the table. With so many cuts and scrapes on her battered form, it was difficult to determine whether the woman had also been the victim of sexual assault in the days or hours before her death. Noting the pink stains on Barry’s rounded cheeks, Luke decided to discuss that possibility with the medical examiner. “When will Dr. Hoyt be available for a phone consultation?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

Luke sighed and rubbed his tired eyes. There was one more thing he had to do before he went off duty, and it was the worst job imaginable. “Who’s her next of kin?”

Her house was unnaturally dark, quiet, and empty.

It was also stiflingly hot, so Shay made the rounds, opening the windows in her bedroom, the bathroom, and the kitchen, pushing aside the sliding glass door in the living room and turning on the ceiling fan overhead. They had an air conditioner, one that worked, but now that the temperature outside had dropped there was no reason to turn it on. By midnight, if she left the windows open, the house would be cold.

As predicted, a pile of dirty dishes littered the kitchen sink. A plastic milk jug, sans milk, sat out on the cream-colored tile countertop. The red leather purse she’d been carrying last night was upended next to an open pizza box on the coffee table in front of the TV, proof that Dylan had fended for himself.